I’m told that his name won’t be officially released until his parents can arrive here from Mexico to identify the body.

………

Last week, our Orange County correspondent mentioned in passing that she’d spotted what looked like the initial markings for a bike lane near the Santa Ana courthouse.

Now Mike Wilkinson sends confirmation that the lanes are going in. Along with signs telling salmon cyclists to turn around.

………

A reader writes to share her post-CicLAvia experience with an aggressive driver.

CicLAvia was its usually flurry of fantasticness that was over too soon. By 3pm, I was already commiserating with a friend about jonesing until the next one! You know the feeling, kind of like late Christmas morning.

But. But then. CicLAvia was over. And the road closures had created hordes of people operating vehicles under the influence of rage which doesn’t subside immediately when those barricades come down.

I was mashing westbound on 3rd Street, approaching Olive and minding the countdown timer. Despite what I, as a slowpokey old woman, consider a scary amount of speed, there’d be no time for me to clear the green. I braked at the yellow. The sedan behind me did not. Instead, the driver passed me on the left and shot into the Third Street Tunnel. How he didn’t sideswipe the vehicle in the designated left turn lane, I will never know.

Technically, the driver didn’t hit me; he hit the cardboard Militant Angeleno crossbucks protruding from under the flap of my Chrome bag. There was a single, loud THWIP as the cardboard bent and smacked my left flank. I knew immediately that my art project had been damaged, but didn’t feel the welt forming until I’d cleared the tunnel, and couldn’t pull off my dress to verify until I got home. The wound can barely even be called that; it’s just superficial, no broken skin and it won’t scar.

If I hadn’t already had a bad feeling about this driver, I would have been in the middle of the lane, exactly where I was supposed to be. I’d be writing this from the hospital, or not at all.

And no, I didn’t report it. I was hot and sweaty and tired, and had no information to give the police. I’m not even certain of the driver’s gender. “Mid-sized silver-grey sedan, last seen heading west.” Yeah, that’s helpful. Besides, the LAPD has made it crystal clear that hit and runs are too difficult to investigate, and an incident so minor that it doesn’t warrant reporting will serve only to divert resources away from solvable crimes. Also, I didn’t feel like explaining to an officer who should already know that it’s 100% legal for a cyclist to be in the left lane at that location. I was on a one way street and fixing to turn left onto Flower, and even in a car it’s fucking suicide to try to get over into the left lane. In the tunnel it’s impossible, and upon emerging, the two lanes immediately split into five.

Earlier in the day, I’d gotten rear-ended at the Mandatory Dismount Zone, and that collision was merely hilarious. It would’ve been awesome to have a rear-facing camera to have recorded the expression on the apologetic perpetrator’s face! But alas.

The Times also seems shocked that white people would support the Black Lives Matter movement at CicLAvia. Wait. Who says CicLAvia is a liberal event? Or do they suppose that conservatives would never set foot on a bike, let alone set foot on foot?

CiclaValley offers a good summation of Sunday’s CicLAvia. Seriously, does anyone realize just how hard it is keeping all those damned internal caps straight?

In non-CicLAvia-related news, KPCC looks at LA’s ban on locking bikes to parking meters, which is largely ignored by riders and cops alike, and how the ban could be lifted in Westwood to address the area’s acute shortage of safe bike racks.

State

A San Diego salmon cyclist is lucky to survive a head-on collision with just a broken arm after reportedly veering out into traffic; police suspect she may have been drinking.

Unbelievable. A driver flees the scene after killing a Utah handcyclist, and will have charges dismissed in just 36 months if he pays a measly $2500 in court fees and writes an apology to the victim’s family. Evidently, life is really cheap in the Beehive State.

A pair of mountain bikers ride into a dispute over overuse of wild trails in their attempt to ride all the rideable Colorado mountains over 14,000 feet elevation.

A Kansas letter writer insists that highways are meant for cars, and there’s nowhere to pass groups on cyclists who take the lane on the one he drives, even though it has both a right lane and a left lane.

A Houston bike rider gets screwed twice; once by a deputy constable who hit him while responding to a call, and again by a law that limits his compensation to just $100,000, forcing him to pay his medical expenses out of pocket.

A Texas bike rider called both 911 and his wife before passing out after suffering five fractured ribs, a broken left fibula, a partially collapsed lung and some nasty road rash when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver.

Congratulations to Anderson IN, which just conducted a road diet to give the city its first bike lanes. Although that’s got to be the widest damn center turn lane I’ve ever seen.

A Massachusetts driver is charged with fleeing the scene after killing a motorized bike rider he described as a dear friend; he reportedly got out and looked at his friend before driving off, promising a witness he’d be right back.

International

Six large international cycling events team together to form the World Association of Cycling Events. Yet somehow, they leave out CicLAvia, which should serve as proof to the Times that it isn’t a just bike event.

A 12-year old Australian boy is the latest bike rider to suffer a slashed neck because some asshole — and I use the term advisedly — strung a rope across a trail. Note to The Age: Attempting to decapitate someone by stringing a rope between two trees may be a lot of things, but a prank, it ain’t.

An Aussie developer rejects claims that an improved bikeway will encourage investment along the corridor. After all, that’s only been shown to work around the world, so why would anyone expect it to work there?

One comment

Rather than making an exception for the law on locking bikes to parking meters (though really, it is a stupid law), people should focus on the fact that the Westwood Business Improvement District won’t put in any bike racks. LADOT can’t install racks in the Village because the BID controls what goes in on the sidewalks.

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